[omk3]

Originally Posted by dreams

This is a fascinating discussion.

I have a question. Has anyone found that after speaking their 2nd language for a number of years that it has become pretty much their first language?

I don't think another language can so easily replace your first language, but I can tell you this. Whenever I'm learning a language, and get obsessed by it to a degree, I catch myself sometimes thinking in it, which is a bit weird. Sometimes other languages have constructions, interjections, even whole thought processes that are not common in your (my) own language. In that respect, I do feel like my mind broadens that little bit to incorporate them and happily makes them my own. To the annoying effect that I start dropping, say, japanese words in greek conversations Okay, not often, but it happens. What happens more often is that I think something in english (as I use this language a lot) and have difficulty translating it to greek, my own native language. I am sometimes shocked by this, but I think it's natural. I do think differently according to the language I'm using at the moment.

Originally Posted by ficbot

I don't 'live' in my second language, but I teach in it (actually, French is my third language) and one thing I have found ever since I started teaching (and hence, using it more) is that when I read, I have stopped translating in my head as I go. Sometimes, I will have a moment of awareness where I realize I am not translating, and I will panic and start doing it again to make sure I am really comprehending everything, and that usually stops up the whole thing and makes me feel confused and anxious But I am getting much better at just going with it and reading like a regular person.

I think it's very conducive to language learning to never translate, if I can help it. If I let myself feel the language, as if it was my native one, I am more open to its nuances and alien constructions. Otherwise, I feel that things that can never be perfectly translated, will remain out of reach...

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

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That said, it's dangerous to jump to conclusions about what concepts a culture has or doesn't have, based on language.

In Japanese, the words for "you" and "me" are recent constructions. I think they were introduced as a consequence of contact with Westerners who couldn't "get" that a language has no word for "I".

Does this means that the Japanese have no undestanding of the concept of self? Obviously not, although it can probably be linked to the way the Japanese see the individual as mostly members of society, and defined by their status in society. In the Genji monogatari, characters are identified by their position at Court, so one character can be called different names as the novel progresses and their position changes.

Language Log has a lot of posts about the myths on a given language having "N words for X" or "no word for Y". Most of these statements are factually incorrect, and what if they were indeed correct? It wouldn't mean much in itself

I will leave you on this thought:

Well, as I'm learning japanese right now, I'm not sure if the words for I and you are new (they don't seem to be), but they are amazingly varied (me as in small boy, me as a superior adult man, me as a sexy woman, me as an equal, etc etc, in very simplistic terms), and still are never used if it can be avoided. It is a source of surprise that you don't learn I and you on your very first lesson, as in most languages I know, but it makes sense, as you can actually speak japanese without ever using these words.
And of course it says something about how japanese think, and how their society is structured. Maybe this is changing in recent years, but it seems that the sense of a japanese person's place in society (or any other group, like an extended family, or a company) is more important than the sense of self as we know it. Oversimplifications and gereralisations are dangerous and often wrong of course, and I would appreciate a japanese person's views on this, if there is one around.

Originally Posted by TGS

The relationship between the language we use and the way we carve up the world - the categories we use - is fascinating. Prepositions are one of the weirdest language features and the way the prepositions in English do not quite map on to the prepositions in Danish cause me as a non-native Danish speaker, and the Danish people I teach English to no end of problems. English has far more prepositions than Danish and uses them in weird ways - why might you be "on" a bus but "in" a car for example, but in Danish be "på" a bus and also be be "på" work (if you ask Google på translates as "at")?

Modern Greek is the same. We have mainly one preposition for everyday use to show either place or direction: σε (seh). It means on, it means at, it means in, it means to. At work, on the bus, on the table, in the garden, in the bathtub, to work, give to this person, all σε. Very practical. We have a million others (slight exaggeration) of course, but we rarely use them in everyday speech.

Colour categories are also fascinating - whilst all languages seem to more or less agree on certain central examples of some colours, the number of basic colour categories varies from language to language. You can read bits of a fascinating book here.

Greeks too have two distinct words for light and dark blue (though the dark blue one is imported, μπλε - bleh), and I'm always surprised that english uses the same word for both colours. The japanese have a word, aoi, which I was taught was something like a greenish blue. I understand it can be the colour of the leaves on the trees, the colour of the sky, or the colour of faraway mountains.

Originally Posted by idlogin

Wayaye man! Living in Geordieland, i can attest to that fact. I've grown to love the accent though. way better than cockney in my opinion ;-)

I'm ganin nyem( i''m going home)

Oooh, I want to hear this aloud!